


you never know what you might harbor (underneath all that armor)

by Aeolian



Series: all the people you belong to (their hands upon your heart) [2]
Category: Captain Marvel (Marvel), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Drug Use, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 18:37:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2822153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeolian/pseuds/Aeolian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carol Danvers, time and time again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you never know what you might harbor (underneath all that armor)

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the happi(er) half of this series. You don't need to read [you love me like a soldier (so I love you like a time bomb)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2761157) to understand this fic.
> 
> So, for anyone unfamiliar with Carol Danvers, she's everything Captain American wants to grow up to become. She's strong, bulletproof, can fly and _has a uniform that doesn't require talcum powder and strategic wriggling to get into_. She's a former USAF colonel, worked with Homeland Security, NASA and CIA (both retconned, I think?), as the editor of Women's magazine and is a published author, on top of which she's also led the Avengers and is currently out-badassing the Guardians of the Galaxy.
> 
> With that said,
> 
>  **Warnings:**  
>  There's mentions of a possible suicide (canonical, and mentioned once and never again), and Carol popping prescription pain medication like they're candy (also canonical, but I'm pretty sure they were actually prescribed in canon?).

**3 weeks after**

She walked out of the ocean, with not a single memory in her head.

The locals say they saw the plane drop out of the air, disintegrating almost instantaneously like tissue paper, warped aluminum pieces washing up on shore for days, caught in driftwood and against the moored boats. The beachcombers and gawkers come in droves. An abuelita with spun-sugar hair leads her by the hand to her red-roofed home, where she feeds her pabellon criollo--black beans, rice, fried plantains and fresh-caught fish, before showing her a spare room that once belonged to her son, before he was lost at sea. That night, unable to sleep, she sat on the bed of Lula's son, gazing out the window, rain drumming on the roof, watching the waves dance, welcoming home millions of bright red crabs, joyously waving their claws under the first rain of the year.

The storm washes loam and leaves into the once-crystalline sea, turning it a thick pea green, knocking pieces of debris loose from the seabed. She's coming back from the Giacomo plantation, hands sticky with cacao juice, carefully picking her way past the downed branches, squinting against the setting sun, when she hears the shouting. She runs down the grid-planted hill, and finds men collectively rocking what first appears to be a beached whale, but turns out to be most of the front half of a plane, blackened and corroded by seawater. She splashes into the sea to help, and together they roll the wreckage end over end onto dry land. She squeezes into the destroyed cockpit eagerly, hoping to find some remnant of her former life.

There is no black box. Single-engine planes do not require flight data recorders, nor single-pilot planes cockpit voice recorders, and apparently she hadn't feel the need to go above and beyond regulations. She is about to give up hope, when Juanlu wriggles one skinny arm between the mangled dashboard and the shredded pilot's seat, and pulls out a wallet, gleefully flourishing it before dropping it in her open palm.

That night, the entire village celebrates, around dinner tables groaning under the weight of mountains of creamy noquis, crispy empanadas enveloping juicy clams and minced shark, fried tequenos bursting with gooey cheese, with sides of crusts of cornmeal arepa stuffed with cheese and spiced sancocho so thick you could stand a spoon in it, all washed down with sweet, rice-scented chicha de arroz--or at least until someone breaks out the rum to raucous cheers.

Much later, after the guests stagger home, singing about herons and roses, and all the dishes are washed and put away, she unveils the wallet's treasures on the white-sand playa, using the bright glow of the newly uncovered full moon as her lamp, while the waves laps up the offerings of crab eggs adorning the beach. Inside are a hodgepodge of Singapore dollars and Central African francs, the wet remains of a folded note, an unsigned Waverly public library card and--the jackpot--a driver's license. She runs wondering fingers over the plastic card, rubbing crusted salt off a photo of her face but someone else's name. Who is Carol Danvers? Why does she remember ICAO regulations but not her own life? Maybe someone home will know; someone in--she checks--Iowa.

The next morning, Lula's husband Sandro has Carol help him push his blue pinero boat into the water at low tide, the other boats nestling lazily in the sand, well above the water line, like cats sunning in the pink dawn light. The boat is filled with boxes and bundles lashed down, and a bushel of bananas, still green.

"Going on a trip, Tio Sandro?" she asks, teasingly.

Sandro, deaf in one ear, just blinks at her. She opens her mouth to repeat the question, but Lula answers instead.

" _You_ are, Machita," she says, and at Carol's blank look, says wryly, "Aren't you going home?"

They wave off her sputtered attempts to return the gift, to repay them, and press her firmly into the boat. She waves at them until they are nothing more than specks on the horizon, a tiny white-haired couple, leaning on each other for support, waving right back.

She putters north towards Grenada, the sun peeking between clouds, warm on her shoulder, planning on following the Lesser Antilles, refueling whenever she needs to, until she reaches Puerto Rico, where her driver's license might get her on a plane in the right direction.

Nature, being a jerk, has other plans.

The waves start getting choppy before the sky suddenly dims, and she's turning the boat back towards land, the rain and the spray coming from every direction, disorienting in the dark, when, THWACK!, a plank tears the motor clean off her boat, which spins wildly, and she can only cling to the side of the boat, arms and legs wrapped tight. Lightning flashes, and she sees, in glimpses, waves taller than buildings, now like looking up a deep well, now like tipping over the apex of a roller coaster.

It'd be a great way to spend a Sunday, if only she had something to punch, but the whole thing as it is just makes her angry. As if it senses her thoughts, the black storm disappears as quickly as it arrived, fleeing westward, the sea subsiding to gentle waves like a child's tantrum petering out into hiccups. The sun reappears.

She fastens an oar out of floating debris, checks the sun against her watch, and paddles north, until she sees land, a dark smear against the horizon, three days later.

"Excuse me, friend, can you tell me where we are?" she asks the first person she meets, in an empty port ending in two buildings, a restaurant and a bar.

"Los Morros," says the bartender, ceaselessly wiping beer glasses, and, when she continues to look blank, "Where are you headed?"

"Anywhere in Puerto Rico," she says, eying the rows of glass bottles, brown and amber and crystal clear, tempting after days of bananas and salted fish.

He barks with laughter. "Puerto Rico's a long way from here, Machita. This is Cuba."

She rolls her shoulders, which feel warm and loose, like after a good warm-up. She can row some more. She thanks him, rapping the counter twice, and heads back to the long concrete pier, where her boat is tied.

From there, it's a day's trip to Florida, where a hitchhiker's thumb and the net gain from the scrapped boat get her across the country and into a gravel driveway leading up to an ancient milk-white farmhouse, nestled in a copse of cedars and oaks shedding slush-ice. Muscle memory has her reaching above the door jam, where her fingers brush against a key, cold and familiar.

She takes a deep breath, and pushes open the door.

 

**4 weeks before**

She's soaring over the Timor Sea, lapis lazuli water shot through with golden flecks of land, when the anger sloughs off of her, like flying far enough to see the lay of the land, to see the entirety of herself. She can fly. She can _still fly_.

She celebrates the gift of life in Singapore, gorging on messy dragon fruit under the spray of the Merlion, sipping fiery hot laksa under vinyl market umbrellas, feeding bits of curry rice to scrawny street cats harassed by giant rats, and writing off durian as a failed experiment. The smell lingers in her plane for days.

But she can't stay away from the sky for long. She itches for _higher, further, faster...more_. Waiting for her turn on the runway, she takes the note out of her wallet and rereads it, running her fingers over familiar words. _Over the years, I've come to think of these particular traits as the shared attributes of a chosen people--the Lord put us here to punch holes in the sky._

 

**9 weeks after**

She's just starting to get used to the name on the unopened mail piling up on her kitchen table, the four semi-feral cats who have stopped fleeing whenever she enters a room but still keep a wary distance, and she's found the hidden crawlspace that leads into the attic. Progress--she'll take whatever she can get. There's still nothing on Carol Danvers, who seems allergic to keeping diaries or personal correspondence, except for the faded note in her wallet, now dried and smoothed out (--rn to Jim, 617358--), but there's a wealth of knick-knacks from the previous owners. Clothes, books, baseball cards, yellow flaking comic strips. She sneezes, giving up organizing for another day, and heads downstairs for a tissue.

There's a tiny Asian girl sitting at her kitchen table.

She's tapping away at her phone, the table now dusted, mail sorted into piles, petting a purring cat in her lap, the orange demon that hisses when Carol comes within ten paces of it. Naturally, the cat flees upon seeing Carol.

"Aw, come back, Chewie," says the stranger, still distracted by her phone.

"Chewie?" says Carol, mystified.

The girl startles, dropping the phone.

"Carol!" she cries, and before Carol can twitch, she has an armful of babbling, agitated, _crying_ girl. "Oh, Carol, I thought the neighbors had brought in your mail--I didn't know you were back. I was so worried! You weren't returning my calls, or my emails, or--"

"Wait, back up," says Carol, reeling under the massive wall of emotions assaulting her, "Actually, start over. Who are you?"

"Wendy," says the girl, wiping her eyes, "Wendy Kawasaki. It hasn't been that long, has it? You hired me to help with your new book."

"New book?"

Wendy blinks at Carol in consternation, who feels just the same. Wendy continues studying her, chewing her lip, until sudden comprehension lights up her eyes.

"It's the brain lesion, isn't it?" she breathes, "You don't remember."

"Tell me about it," says Carol, relieved that finally, someone has the answers, "I don't remember a single thing."

"Well, it's not like you really told me anything about yourself," says Wendy, and Carol mentally bangs her head against the nearest wall, "But hey, you wrote a few personal anecdotes in your first book, so I guess that's a good a starting point as any."

Carol starts to say, "Great, what's it called?" when Wendy yanks a massive hard-cover book out of her messenger bag and lays it with a whump on the table. _Not Bigger but Brighter_ by Carol Danvers, reads the cover, _Fifty Years of Women in Space._

"I've been in space?" says Carol, much more squeakily than she intended.

"Not sure, but you worked with NASA and the Air Force," says Wendy, flipping the book open. Carol belated notices that there are tens of multi-colored Post-It tabs sticking out between the covers, making the book look like a raver hedgehog. "All of the blue tabs are you. You should take a look."

Carol skims the book. The passages are all short blurbs, quick asides in relation to the astronauts the old Carol must have felt were more interesting than she was. Not a lot could be gleaned from the text. She liked flying. Space is cool. Carol can feel her gut clenching as she reads, the dread crawling up her spine. This Carol was about as open as a galvanized steel bear trap. Was there anywhere she could find information about herself?

"Hey, are you alright?" says Wendy, softly.

"I'm the best. Why?"

"You just look a little--" Wendy makes a vague gesture around her face.

Carol shakes her head to clear it, and offers Wendy a smile. "It's nothing. Tell me about the new book."

"Oh. Sure! So, you were writing a book about female fighter pilots in WWII," says Wendy, perking up, "And you hired me to help research. We've been interviewing retired pilots and their children, and had been discussing bringing on a translator or two, so we could interview German and Russian pilots, when--"

"When I flaked out."

Wendy shifts, uncomfortably. "I'm sure you had a good reason."

"So where do we pick up?"

Wendy blinks again, and it's like she's shifted gears into Super Woman. "I've been keeping up with follow-ups with the interviewees, so we're about 95% done here in the States, with one more session with Mrs. Taylor next week, if you'd like to sit in on that. I've been sending feelers out to German and Russian pilots and their descendants, and so far the feedback has been positive. I'll send you list of potential interview subjects, as well as a list of translators I feel will be suitable for us. I've already emailed Mr. Johnson, your publisher, and he has given you an extension, because of the new material, so we're still on schedule. For today, we're going to the Post Office to pick up your mail, to the bank to deposit your royalty checks, and to the library to empty out your email inbox, which is probably full, since everything I've sent bounces. Bring your ID."

Carol stares. "However much I'm paying you is still not enough."

"I know," says Wendy, smiling sweetly, "You already promised me half of your next two advances. And you're paying me to write my thesis. It's a win-win for me."

 

**13 weeks after**

She dreams of flying, weightlessly, above a parched desert in an F-16, haggling for exotic fruits in the shade of a Cessna 210, climbing into the cockpit of some shuttle prototype, pointed at the stars. She doesn't know which of the dreams are memories, and which are the side effect of her research, stitched together from hissing recordings of cobwebbed voices and books borrowed from the library, stacked high on both sides of the rocking chair in the living room.

Mostly, she dreams of being enveloped by stars, silent and bright.

 

**19 weeks after**

At first, she thinks it's one of the local teens, itching to spend cash freshly earned from detasseling corn, driving down the wrong driveway to pick up a friend to the movies, but when she looks out the screen door, there's a restored cherry-red Dodge Challenger growling up her gravel driveway, with a New York license plate, not even trying to blend in with the cornfields. The sight of the car makes her blood burn, so she grabs the Mossberg 500 off the rack by the door, checks that it's loaded with homemade rock salt shells, and swings it over her shoulder as she swaggers towards the tourist's muscle car as obnoxiously as possible.

The driver's door pops open, and a wheat-haired man pops up, throwing his thick, muscled arms wide.

"Hey there, stranger," he says, cheerfully, "Miss me?"

There are other four people crammed into the car, at least one of whom is a little too big to fit. She narrows her eyes. "Who are you?"

"Barton? Clint? Dude you drove across four states?" says the stranger, and then, when she doesn't react, drops his arms in defeat. "Aww, tumor, no."

The passenger door swings open, and a dark-eyed man swans out, hands held palm out in mock submission, "See, Katniss, I told you your Mockingjay speech wouldn't work. Hi, I'm Tony Stark, you know me--everyone knows me. Nice to meet you. Now, how about you let us in, show us some of that corn-fed Midwestern hospitality, chop chop, and we can discuss this like civilized people, preferably without any shotguns present and not where a bird can shit on me."

She can feel her trigger finger itch. She glances at Barton, who has his head cradled in his hands, muttering something to himself, when one of the backseat doors clicks open, and a svelte redhead eels out.

"Sorry about those two idiots," she says, dry as an Afghanistan summer, "Maybe we should all come out? You can see for yourself and decide if you want to trust us or not."

Carol nods, hand still tight around the grip of her rifle, and the other two passengers disembark--a man in a too tight T-shirt, who has to has to hunch his shoulders to make it out of the car, looking embarrassed the entire time, and a bespectacled brunet doesn't have to and still hunches his shoulder, scooting out of the car, knees clicking.

"Is that everyone," she asks Mr. T-shirt, who's still red past his collar, "Or am I going to find more people in the trunk?"

"Um, yes ma'am, no one else in this car," he says.

She's about to ask more when there's a shriek of "Oh my god, it's Captain America!" and a blur streaks past her, resolving into Wendy furiously pumping the bemused Captain's hand, and then pulling him towards the house, babbling the whole time, gathering in her wake a loudly complaining Tony-Stark-you-know-me, an amused redhead, and the quiet man in glasses.

The front yard is suddenly vast and empty, and so very quiet.

"Nice car," she says to Barton, to break the silence.

"I know," he says, smirking, "You sold her to me."

 

**105 weeks before**

She shows up at her baby brother Joe's door, her giant fuck-off car muscling aside two Jettas on the townhouse's curb, an olive duffle containing all of her worldly possession between her feet, hand squeezing her Air Force discharge papers into damp papier mache, her entire adult life reduced to zero with four little words: not fit for combat. Matt lets her in, the gold ring on his left hand already worn matte by long hours at the lathe, the sweet smell of shaved wood wafting into the Boston streets. The spare room has already been set up. She takes it in, the last place she had seen Stevie, before his last deployment in Iraq, kicked out by a father who had molded him to take Carol's place, and to his dismay, found that his son had taken her career path as well. That night, unable to sleep, she sits on the bed of a dead man, gazing out the window, snow drifting into the street, listening to the carolers, going from door to door, celebrating the birth of another man gone too soon.

It takes three weeks for her to shift gears from self-pity to stir-crazy. The cards and calls have trickled off into nothing, probably because she lets the calls go to voice mail, the cards go unanswered, except those from Jim, which she tosses or deletes unopened. Why bother? They all say the same thing. _Our thoughts and prayers are with you_ or _Wishing you well_ , or the one from Colonel Byer-- _Get well soon_. _That_ card she feeds to Joe's shredder.

She drives west, a good a direction as any, with twice as much luggage as before, her duffel now joined by a care pack of quilts, toiletries, gloves, and a mountain of Joe's stress-baked cookies. The noon sun finds her still on the Massachusetts Turnpike, and she's finally reaching some speed outside New York when she sees a hitchhiker.

"This is the most beautiful ride I ever seen," he says, the moment her window rolls down, nose chapped red with wind and cold.

"Where're you headed?" she says.

"Iowa, eventually, but just as far as is convenient for you's fine too," he replies, still running his eyes enviously over the dashboard. It's a little creepy, but she figures she can take him if he tries to jack her car.

"Lucky for you, I'm going even further."

"Yeah? Where you headed?"

She shrugs, one-shouldered. Wherever the car takes her.

"Yeah, well if you don't need the car after Iowa, you know where you can find a buyer," he says, drowsily, snuggling into the seat. He's got dark circles under his eyes, and his clothes are much too loose around the arms and thighs, suggesting he used to be much bigger. He's out like a light before she can reply, snoring lightly.

She turns down the radio and turns up the heat.

Clint doesn't wake until they're halfway across Illinois, car chewing up the miles for breakfast. He doesn't have much to say to her. Good. She's got nothing to say to him.

It's another half day until they rumble up a dirt road, through a grove of trees, into the last century. A charming farmhouse perches daintily, like a lady in her Sunday lace, on the edge of a small plot of land, nestled next to a cheery red barn. He invites her in for a drink, and she's tired enough and her head hurts enough to give in, damn the AA chip in her pocket, matching him beer for beer, when, four beers in, and both too drunk and not drunk enough for this conversation, she blurts, "I came out here to die."

Luckily, Clint is just as sloshed, and just reaches out to blindly pat her hip. Given that she's sitting on his couch and he's slid all the way off, all he pats is the couch cushion next to her.

"The doctors found a lesion in my supercarry...shupler,,,between the two halves of my brain. A tumor," she says. The words lift a weight off her shoulders, and she feels like she's floating free, letting someone else control her mouth. "The damn thing's taking over the parts of my brain that make me _me_. Doctors told me I'm not allowed to fly. I'm a pilot. Flying's what I _do_."

"The head-shrinks couldn't find a god in my head," says Clint, "Told me I'm _still_ not allowed to shoot. I'm a sniper."

Carol frowns. "That doesn't make sense. You need a god in your head to shoot?"

"I sure need to shoot him all right," says Clint, "Fuck, I need another drink."

She closes her eyes to stop the ceiling from tipping over, and she hears Clint shuffling around the kitchen, light scraping, a crash ("I'm okay!"), and then footsteps getting closer.

"Lookit what I found," drawls Clint, leaning against the doorway, whiskey bottle dangling between his fingers.

The night gets a lot less clear at that point.

At one point, they're laughing uproariously at something she can't even remember anymore. And another--

"What did you want to be when you grew up?" he whispers. They’re both flat on their backs, staring at the mottled ceiling.

"I don't remember," says Carol.

"Make something up."

"I...everything. I wanted to be everything, I wanted to do everything. See the world, go to space, write the great American novel, beat Alexandr Fedotov's record. What did you want to be?"

Much later, she's petting Clint's hair while he sobs in her lap. And later yet--

"And you can have the house. And-and--"

"No, noooo. You want the car? I'll give you the car."

"I'll pay you for it."

"Fine. Then _I'll_ pay _you_ for the house."

And then--

Sunlight slicing into the backs of her eyes, the hardwood floor mashed against her thigh, her shoulder, a hard, leather briefcase the worst pillow ev--

A briefcase?

The purple monstrosity turns out to be stuff with crisps $20s, probably with consecutive serial numbers, because this is her life, and her Dodge Challenger nowhere to be seen, only track marks in the snow to show it was there at all, and not an illusion created by her autophaging brain.

The house is empty.

 

**2 weeks before**

The headache, which never really left, comes back with a vengeance, at first a mild twinge over Thailand, progressing into a constant throb by the time she crosses the Arabian Gulf. In Chad, she has to stop for days, hiding under a blanket among the fuel tanks, unable to leave the plane; the brightness and noise of the vivacious city too much for her dying brain to handle.

She rubs a finger over the folded note, like a good luck charm, a ward against the headache. She's been adding her own words to the back of the note, scribbled in pencil. One night, feeling especially morbid, she prints in block letters across the top: RETURN TO JIM RHODES, then erases his last name and adds his cell phone number instead.

The headache doesn't get better. She fists over cash to one of the kids curiously poking at her plane, tells him to go buy medicine for her in broken French, and goes back to her blanket fort, sunlight carving daggers into the front of her brain, squeezing her eyes shut for just a moment. She wakes to gentle scratching on the outside, and finds the boy fidgeting in the dusk, slapping at mosquitoes, a bottle labeled tramadol in one hand, and to her surprise, about half of her money converted to CAF in the other. She tipped him ten thousand francs, and he hugs her, before skipping off into the darkness.

**23 weeks before**

She settles in to life on the edge of civilization. The single kitten she took home in a fit of loneliness has multiplied into an army, taking over both barn and house. Chewie, still her favorite, balances lightly on her shoulders wherever she goes, chewing lightly on her earlobe. Her headaches are getting worse, and sometimes it's all she can do to get out of bed, instead of curling around a cat and sleeping the day away. She can almost feel the tumor grow between her ears. She still doesn't have much in the way of worldly possessions, with only Joe and his townhouse to inherit anything she might accumulate, but she's got a new P.O. box, a new Ford F-150, and a new rifle after too many people try to jimmy her locks.

"The house haunted," explains Rose the librarian, "See eef you ghost."

"Yeah, well, they can ask me to my face, instead of sneaking through my back door," grumbles Carol. She _might_ be in a bad mood. She's sent out a manuscript to all the major publishing houses, figuring she might as well check off the one item in her bucket list that doesn't require flying, and her P.O. box is still depressingly empty. A few were kind enough to send rejection letters. The rest seem content to keep her in limbo.

She's on the verge of asking the universe for someone deserving to punch, when the front door of Julian's bakery bangs open and a man charges like an F-22 up the street, cries of "Thief! Thief! He's got my bag!" following him.

She doesn’t even need to think, her fist landing in his face before the shouts even register across her conscious brain. He goes down like his engines've been cut, and his payload, a messenger bag, drop from his limp fingers, Julian windmilling to a halt just behind him. There are thanks, a lot of shaking hands, and then Julian invites her inside for tea with his cousin.

Staring at the mountain of cupcakes that materialize before her, Carol wonders what she'd gotten herself into.

"Thank you so much!" gushes the cousin Wendy, her ankle on ice, having apparently tripped while trying to chase the thief, "That bag has all of my treasures in it. If he had gotten away before I could scan them all--"

"Scan?" says Carol, mystified.

"Scan," she repeats, pulling out a thick sheaf of paper, "I got these records from the Bremer County Court, and I'm going to scan them and collate them and--"

"History major," Julian mock whispers, eyes wide. Carol nods slowly back.

"--and it's going to be the best term paper ever!" crows Wendy, "Also, I'm a little sugar high. We've been testing new cupcake and frosting combinations all morning. You have to take some, before I puke all over the walls."

She leaves with a light heart, and a heavy bag, cheerful enough to face her P.O. box this week. There's a single letter, surprisingly thick, and when she opens, the first line reads, "Dear Ms. Danvers, We are delighted to accept--".

She screams, loud enough that the post office clerk jerks awake, tumbling off his stool. She runs right back to the bakery, where they hug her and hop, except Wendy, who can't hop and waves her arms around instead. They scan the letter, and the second page reads, "--and we would be pleased to offer you an advance to write an additional book on a historical subject--" and Carol says to Wendy, "Listen, listen! What are you specializing in?"

"Well, currently, I'm researching westward migration during the Second World War--"

"Perfect! Listen, I've been wanting to write about female fighter jet pilots, and I need a research assistant--"

"--And I need a job. Cool! I'll set up an employment contract and Gantt charts. I'll be in Iowa City after next week though, are you okay with Skype meetings?"

And before Carol can answer, Julian yells from the kitchen, "Cupcake cake time!"

"He's sugar high too," mock whispers Wendy, eyes wide.

 

**139 weeks before**

She's half a mile below ground level, in facilities purporting to be NASA's but far more secretive, overwatching near-light-speed shuttles being developed while Boeing and SpaceX are still working out how to efficiently escape Earth's gravity well, when her cell phone, which shouldn't have reception this far underground but apparently now does, rings. _Flyboy_ , reads the screen.

"So how are things in your deep, dark, classified bunker?" says Jim when she picks up.

"Deep, dark and classified, as usual," Carol says, casually strolling into the camera's blind spot. It's the not-spooks' fault for not listening to the Air Force liason's concerns about security if they don't catch what she's saying. "Why, jealous I get to play with the big toys and you don't?"

"Big toys, huh?" he says, chuckling, "Whiz Bang, you know why I can't be there."

"Ignorance will keep Tony Stark in line. Ignorance of this battle station," she says, in a stage whisper. The shuttle, surrounded by its retinue of milling worker-engineers, is just as cool, if not cooler than the Death Star, if she says so herself.

One of the not-spooks on the catwalks above jerks into attention, at the same time Jim says, suddenly seriously, "Listen, I know you can't confirm it's S.H.I.E.L.D. you're working with, but please--"

The klaxons shriek awake, warning lights flashing red. She shouts a quick goodbye down the phone, and hangs up, herding the engineers towards the exits. The speakers are still blaring, "--NOT A DRILL. WARNING LEVEL: INFRARED. ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE. THIS IS--" when she sees Dr. Lawson in the far corner, still elbow-deep in the shuttle's gut.

She hands off the engineers to the nearest not-spook, and elbows her way back to the shuttle.

"Dr. Lawson," she shouts over the speakers and klaxons, "We need to go now. The project can--"

"You don't understand, it can't! If we shut down power now, the Psi-key-magnitron--"

"--can be developed again. _You_ we can't--"

"That's not it," says Dr. Lawson, and for the first time she notices the sheen of sweat on his brow, the way his chin trembles, "We are sitting on a bomb. Ten _kilotons_ of power is stored in this one piece. If we allow the force field keeping it in check to fail--"

"Kaboom," breathes Carol, and then, loud enough to be heard, "Okay, doc. Tell me how to help you."

"We need to keep the power constant. I've already unplugged nonessential functions to lower the power load. Now I need you to--"

The lights suddenly cut out, and over the whine of the force field winding down and her own ringing ears, she hears Dr. Lawson swearing "das't das't das't das't" and he hurls her against the far wall, far stronger than he looks, caged between his arms--

And the whole world lights up, blindingly bright, and for one terrible split-second, she sees Dr. Lawson, bright blue and terrified and twisted in pain, shielding her from the blast before--

 

**107 weeks before**

She wakes up in the hospital with nothing but a headache and six months of her life gone, Jim nearly in tears beside her bed, her hand clasped, too tightly, in both of his. She had been admitted with nothing but first degree burns, and what the doctors thought was a broken leg but turned out to be nothing in a second x-ray--nothing to explain her long convalescence. Dr. Lawson, on the other hand--

It takes days of asking, before her NASA counterparts tell her of Dr. Lawson's demise, funeral long since over. Private cemetery, they said, no address on file, so sorry.

Her blood and urine test come back negative, her vision and motor skills within normal parameters, and they put her under the MRI one last time. Just to be sure, she tells Jim, and then she can go home.

"Are you sure?" says Carol, looking at the black and white image in her hands. A stark white blob, like a full moon, protrudes from the middle of her brain like the punchline of some cosmic joke.

"It can be managed in some cases," says Dr. Nayar, "With the right treatment and lifestyle, some patients experience decelerated growth, or even remission."

"How likely is 'some'?"

Dr. Nayar looks tired and worn. "About 10%."

"And when can I fly again?"

Dr. Nayar shakes her head and her lips move, but all Carol can hear is the ringing of her own ears. She signs a Discharge Against Medical Advice form as soon as the doctor leaves, and walks out of the hospital, head high, ignoring the cell phone vibrating in her pocket, Jim's Subaru idling against the curb.

The universe thinks it's _cute_ , does it?

 

**18 weeks before**

Rose forgot Carol's reservation, and so has to put her in the staff break room in the back of the library, musty with eau de old book, off-gassing vinyl, and too many microwaved meals, all the private booths booked on a busy Saturday. Carol powers up her borrowed Thinkpad, surrounded by wires and the hopelessly tangled microphone cord, and Wendy, already online in her apartment in Iowa City, sets up the group video call. They wait, listening to the Skype ringtone.

The first interview subject is a pilot from Texas, who had flown in the WASP program and later became a member of the Mercury 13. Her niece had answered their letters and follow-up phone calls, but promised that Ms. Helen Cobb was delighted to be interviewed over Skype. The call connects, and a strawberry-blonde woman appears, frowning at the screen before suddenly lighting up.

"Oh good, it worked! Hi, nice to finally meet you. I'm Andrea, and this is my aunt Helen."

The face disappears from view, and the dark background brightens to show a living room with floral wallpaper, lace curtains, a few framed paintings, and crouched in a brocade settee under a mid-century floor lamp, a wizened, gremlin-eyed woman.

Carol's never backed down from a challenge in her life. She straightens in her chair and says, "Good afternoon, Ms. Cobb, I'm Carol Danvers, and this is my colleague Wendy Kawasaki. I appreciate the time you've--"

"Blah, blah, blah," says Helen, voice tinny through her earphones, "Let's cut the fancy lingo and get to the nitty-gritty. What are your questions?"

"We were hoping you had stories to share about your experiences in WWII," says Carol, gritting her teeth.

"That isn't what you really want," says Cobb, "You want something that sells. Everything sugar-coated and fluffed, so the public can feel good. Look at how great integration worked during the war--look at how enlightened we already are."

"Of course, if you'd be willing to share why that isn't true--" says Wendy, before Carol can unclench her jaw.

"Sure, kitten. _You_ I like," purrs Cobb, "Now, I got some _juicy_ details on WAFS training..."

Carol keeps her mouth shut, index cards clenched between her fingers. Helen is apparently a great storyteller when she wants to be, and Wendy an eager audience, laughing and asking questions at the right time. But halfway through her evisceration of Senator Glenn at a committee hearing, Helen starts to flag, slurring and losing her thread in the middle of a sentence.

"Maybe we can set up another meeting," says Wendy, apparently noticing as well. Carol checks her clock, and is surprised to find an hour has already passed. They exchange dates and times and pleasantries, and then Wendy signs off.

As soon as Wendy's window winks out, Helen straightens up and says, "Good, now _you_ , kitten, I'm telling you what. I know you."

Carol starts and says, "I'm sure you must be mistaking me for--"

"No," barks Helen, "I might not know Carol Danvers, but I knew that look in your eyes the moment I saw you. How could I not?" She shakes her head. "Things ain't so different now from the way they were then. Folks have always wanted to blame someone for gals like us. 'Her daddy was unkind' or 'some fella broke her heart'."

"Bullshit," growls Carol, and that old anger, never fully banked, flares red-hot. Helen nods, and the grin that spreads across her face promises all the trouble in the world, if only Carol can keep up.

"Yeah, that ain't it at all. You and me, kitten, oh, we're going to have some fun."

 

**1 week before**

The tramadol lasts until Senegal, when she has two pills to face the Atlantic with. She tries to ask a local to buy her more, but they shake their heads and hurry away, nose and mouth covered. An uncovered body lays by the dusty road.

 _When a soul is born with a kind of purpose, it'll damn sure find a way,_ she reminds herself, note in her pocket, _we're going to get where we're going, you and me, death and indignity be damned, we'll get there._

Crushed, in half doses, the two pills carry her across the Atlantic, sweating, shaking and trembling, nearly crashing into the cliffs of Natal before she realizes the land is real and not an illusion.

Her head is _killing_ her.

A kindly soul in town sells her more of the little white pills for the rest of her U.S. cash, and she takes two pills to celebrate, suddenly strong enough to take on the rest of the journey. She flies up the coast of Brazil, past Suriname, and with the setting sun lighting the sea pure gold, decides to push for Venezuela. She's so close, so close to her goal.

 

**19 weeks after**

"Nice decor," says Tony Stark, as she ambles into the house with Barton at her heels, rifle brushing against her leg with every step, "Love what you've done with the place."

The walls are covered with Post-It notes that Wendy and she have used to map out a narrative, the floor with pages of her half-written first draft, the library books now practically hiding the rocking chair from view, Rose's enforcement of the return policy going the way of her memory.

"Thank you," she says, serenely.

"I meant to ask you, I mean, Robin Hood here obviously gets his Paleolithic tendencies from somewhere, and I can definitely see how he came by it, holy asbestos, but I mean, you didn't install any optic cables or--what am I saying, any telegraph cables, did you?"

She had in fact tried to hire someone to lay a broadband cable to the house, but the DSL technician had given her a strange look and said, _You asked if it was possible last year. The answer's still no._

"No, why?" she asks Stark, "Need to tweet your Angry Birds high score?"

"Angry Birds? Look, I could code a game with better physics in my _sleep_ ," he says, at the same time Captain America pops his head into the living room and says, much too sweetly, "Got a minute, Tony? I thought we might help the nice dame chop firewood."

She's about to protest that this nice dame can damn well chop her own firewood, thank you, when Glasses wanders out of the kitchen and shakes his head at her, a pitcher in one hand, a stack of glasses in the other.

"You definitely don't want to miss this," he says, nodding towards the front door.

Half an hour later, sipping frosty glasses of iced tea on the porch with new friends and watching sweaty live-action soft-porn, she has to agree. She has no idea what the two men in her front yard are arguing over, but she hopes it will be cathartic after, oh, another few hours of aggressive flexing.

"Dude, I'd tell them there are more efficient ways of chopping--"

Natasha claps a hand over Clint's mouth and says, over his muffled protests, "Shhh, don't ruin the fun."

"Any way we could get them to take off their shirts?" says Wendy, semi-reverently as Captain America rips a log in half with his bare hands. Bruce, on the other side of Carol, leans over her to clink glasses with Wendy.

**20 weeks after**

She's half out of her mind after a week of herding four cats and five superheroes, watching Tony detox, sweating alcohol and the Internet out of his pores while he compulsively fixes the cars, Steve equally compulsively trailing after him, and Clint, Natasha and the cats lay around where they can be best tripped over, when a tiny quadcopter, the size of her hand, appears out of nowhere, dipping and weaving around her, its camera swiveling to point at her the entire time.

One becomes two, two becomes five, then fifty, and Carol runs back into the house, banging the back door on them, shattering one right down the middle, more streaming through the open windows.

"Drones!" yells Tony, skidding in through the front door, engine grease and terror on his face, "Everyone in the basement! Let's go, let's go, vamanos!"

Carol swats at the drones, slamming down the windows as footsteps thud down the steps, pound across the floor. There's a whistle, and she instinctively ducks, and then the whole world explodes into white-hot noise.

She shakes her head, trying to clear her ringing ears, and through the smoke, she sees the back yard, the entire wall of the farmhouse torn away, a grey giant stomping towards them, a beacon of white light shining from its chest. Someone yanks at her arm, and she shakes it off. She might not remember much, but Carol knows one thing down to her bones: she don't back off so good.

The giant continues marching on the house as she runs at it, smoke stinging her eyes, and she registers that it's made of metal a second before her fist connects. The plate barely dents.

And then she's flying through the air, flipping feet first, landing on the roof, and before she can second-guess herself, she launches herself off the roof, weightless, heady, exactly where she belongs, in the air--and punches straight through the giant robot's eye. It shudders, electricity stinging her forearm up to the elbow, its arm jerking incrementally towards her like it wants to pull her off. She feels something sharp-edged and flat against her fingers, like a chipboard, and _pulls_.

There's a creaking noise, and she has a second of vertigo before the entire robot drops like a puppet with its strings cut, its limbs separating into barely recognizable parts, held together with hydraulic cables like so much shoestring, taking Carol down with it. She pushes aside warped steel frame and wires, climbing shakily out of the wreck, chipboard long gone, as the others run towards her.

"Holy crap, you _flew_ ," says Clint, at the same time Tony says, "How did you know to pull out the Wi-Fi shield?" at the same time Steve says, "You know, we could really use someone with your skill set," at the same time Bruce returns from one of his many, many long walks and says, "Hey, guys, I think I saw a--oh, fallen robot."

Carol holds up her hands to ward off the verbal onslaught. But before she can get a word in edgewise, Natasha says, "What, you boys didn't know what a bad-ass Colonel Danvers is?"

"Wait, Danvers. _Colonel_ ," says Tony, snapping his fingers, eyes wide, "Y _ou're_ Captain Whiz Bang? Holy hell, this explains so much."

"I'm not a---what the hell, Captain _Whiz Bang_?" says Carol, but Tony talks over her.

"No seriously, I have a friend you need to meet. Where the hell is a pen when you need one? This old-school thing seriously sucks--thank you Captain Boy Scout. Okay, here. Call this number."

She sees the string of numbers, (617) 358-7569, familiar as the feel of worn paper under her thumb, wondering who the link to her past was, and she blurts, "That's Jim's number."

"You remember Rhodey? Oh man, you have to call now. Seriously--"

Someone honks from the driveway. Natasha and Clint lean out of Carol's Ford, now tricked out with twice as much horsepower as before, Steve and Bruce climbing into the Dodge. Carol wonders when she lost control of her life.

"C'mon!" Clint calls through cupped hands from the passenger seat, "Let's ditch this party before more of them arrive. You can do your fangirling _after_ you finish your homework, Tony."

"Okay, _mom_ , but seriously, Sucker Punch, you are calling that number," says Tony, jogging backwards towards the driveway, pointing at her with both index fingers, "And Brucie bear, I cannot believe you didn't save shotgun for me. Actually, what am I saying, Cap drives like a grandpa. Hand over the keys."

 

**52 weeks after**

A Subaru comes rumbling carefully up her driveway. She looks up from where she's splitting logs, kept vertical and contained within an old tire nailed down to a heavy block, her jacket and scarf long abandoned, steaming in the sharp morning cold. A tall, dark man steps out of the car, his face sunny, his arms flung wide.

"Hey there, stranger," he says, and the sound of his voice syncs up to a name. "Miss me?"

"Your lack of faith is disturbing, Flyboy," she says, grinning, dropping the hatchet and wrapping her arms around Jim's wide shoulders, "I knew you'd come."

 

**5 weeks before**

The funeral's small, tasteful. Closed-casket.

"I don't know what started the fire," whispers Andrea, dabbing her eyes, "The firefighters say it was self-started, but she is--she was so _strong_."

Just the week before, Helen had been talking about Carol and Wendy paying her a visit, before the cancer metastasized too far. She had seemed lively, and cheerful. She had plans for the great-nieces and nephews on their way.

The family hands her the ashes, and a note. "She wanted to be buried in the sky," explains Andrea.

The note is written in lacy cursive on regular printer paper. _Kitten, you and me've always been different,_ it reads, _always a little separate from the rest. We came into the world spittin' mad, running full bore--to or from what, I ain't never been able to tell._

Carol purchases the Cessna right there in Houston, emptying out the last of her severance pay, tearing out the passenger seats to fit more fuel, charting out a course she'd memorized since her days at the Academy, finishing Amelia Earhart's disastrous last fight, nothing but a dream until now.

She accelerates down that first runway, at the Ellington Field Airport, with her heart pounding in her ears. What if the doctors were right? The air catches her wings, gently cradles her, lifting her into the air. Would it also kill her? But like taking a car out into the desert to see how fast it can go, she needs to find the edge of herself. She bursts through the clouds, sunlight dazzling her eyes.

And like driving through a car wash, all the fear melts off of her, until there is nothing but impossibly blue sky above and clouds below, bathed in harsh sunlight, her headache all but forgotten. She screams in triumph, pushing the little plane into a barrel roll, cargo clinging to the floor through sheer centripetal force. **  
**

 

**Now**

The fuel tanks are empty, and the fumes won't power the turbine for much longer, already stalling twice in the last ten minutes. The stars above are just out of reach, practically humming in the crystalline air, beckoning, beckoning. The sea is a black void. The headache is creeping into the edge of her awareness, so she swallows another tramadol.

She's not giving up. She's Carol fucking Danver, and if the universe thinks it's going to make her give up, it's going to need a hell of a lot more backup. She points the plane towards the stars, exactly where she was always meant to go, and pushes the throttle knob all the way forward.

The stars grow brighter as the engine cuts out, enveloping her in absolute silence.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Julia Weldon's [You Never Know"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYwd_qU8S5g)  
> I ganked a lot of quotes from canon, including [the letter from Helen Cobb](http://kellysue.tumblr.com/post/27504381559/someone-took-the-time-to-put-helens-letter).  
> Also, this is kind of what happens when I combine a fic about Carol's amnesia with a fic on how Carol ends up crossing paths with the Avengers. Err, yeah.


End file.
